It depends where you live. Here in Wisconsin, I am expecting an excellent season, as the weather has been a little cool but no late frost. Late frost can really hurt the crops. Without frost, you might experience a boom this year.

Keep in mind also that pome fruits often tend to be biennial in nature, fruiting very heavily one year and very lightly or not at all the next. This can be minimized if you thin the blossoms or fruitlets while they are very small, only allowing one fruit to develop for every ~6 inches on each branch. Too many fruits can be a heavy burden on the tree, so it might not fruit as much the next year if you don't thin the fruits.

The blossom period does seem to have lasted longer than usual this spring - I'm in the north of England. I've been recording blossom dates for most of my trees on the Orange Pippin tree register, and over the years there is as much as 4 weeks difference.

I've been recording my blossom dates on the O.P. register, as well. My 'Brownlees' Russet' is out of order, though: my earliest flowerer is supposed to be 'Egremont Russet', but Brownlees opened its first blossom four days before Egremont, and they were at maximum blossom, as far as I could estimate, on the same day, the 1st of May. Situation no doubt has something to do with it, but if anything I'd say thast Brownlees was in the worse situation as far as hours of sunlight are concerned - Egremont is further away from the back of the house, which faces south-west, so gets the sun earlier.

I'm not an expert, but I think it's recommended to pre-empt the June drop, because then you can get rid of the small and misshapen fruitlets. The June drop is less discriminating. It's certainly not essential, though: I never do it on my full-size, mature 'james Grieve', because it's much too big to make it possible.

It's helpful to thin right away to one fruit per cluster, or even more severely to one fruit every 4 to 6 inches on each branch. This will maximize the size and beauty of your fruit and prevent biennialism (bearing heavily only one year out of every two, common on most varieties).